Word.ws English Dictionary

second-guesses

second-guesses is the third-person singular simple present indicative of second-guess.

Meaning of second-guess

Verb

second-guess (third-person singular simple present second-guesses, present participle second-guessing, simple past and past participle second-guessed)

  1. (transitive) To vet or evaluate; to criticize or correct, often by hindsight, by presuming to have a better idea, method, etc.
    • Please don't try to second-guess the procedure that we have already refined and adopted.
  2. (intransitive, transitive) To anticipate or predict someone's actions or thoughts by guesswork.
    • In this day and age, it's so easy to stress / 'Cause people are strange and you can never second-guess2000, Paul Godfrey, Ross Godfrey, Skye Edwards, “Rome Wasn't Built In a Day”, in Fragments of Freedom, performed by Morcheeba

Questions about second-guesses

What is second-guesses the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Second-guesses is the third-person singular simple present indicative of second-guess.

Words near second-guesses in the dictionary

  1. second-guarders
  2. second-guess
  3. second-guessed
  4. second-guesser
  5. second-guessers
  6. second-guesses
  7. second-guessing
  8. second-guessings
  9. second-half
  10. second-hand
  11. second-hand shop

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: second-guesses (page history and authors); second-guess (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “second-guesses.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/second-guesses. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.